


Jousting and Crooked Lines

by Taupefox59



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: A knight's tale - Freeform, Demi!Fíli, Glass blowing, Heavily Influenced by, Jousting, M/M, Minor Injuries, Modern AU, Ren Faire!AU, so many references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 18:42:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6819664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taupefox59/pseuds/Taupefox59
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fíli life isn't missing anything. He's got friends, his horse, and the best job in the world.</p><p>Everything starts to heat up when a new glass worker joins the up with the renaissance faire.</p><p>Soon enough, Fili finds that his heart is melting, just like the glass that Kili turns into art every day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jousting and Crooked Lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anathema_Cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anathema_Cat/gifts).



> Written for the SpringFRE. It's cleaned up a little, but still un-beta'd, so if you catch anything, please let me know! Con/Crit always welcome!
> 
> (Nothing here was researched whatsoever, but the thing about glass melting flesh and the thing with the water are both totally true.)

Very few people believed Fíli when he told them his occupation. After all, it competitive jousting was hardly a common profession. Fíli had grown up on a farm, surrounded by horses and books. His love of history and his knack with animals had led him in unexpected directions until he found himself in full plate armour and tilting at his friends as he toured the country.

Fíli loved his job and everything that came with it. The cheers as the jousting took place; the wide-eyed wonder from the crowd that had nothing to do with age and everything to do with delighted enthusiasm. He loved his horse, (whose full name was technically ‘Prioress Sossamon Pandorica’ but Fíli called her ‘Jocelyn’.) he loved the travel, seeing the strange small towns they would pass through, the fading roadside attractions that had long since closed to collect dust. He got to travel through time every day, and he got to travel the world to do it.

Three others also worked on the jousting show; Dwalin, Nori and Bifur. Fíli loved them all as family. He’d been with the troupe for nearly a decade, joining when he had only been seventeen, but he’d never looked back. His life far surpassed anything he ever could have imagined as a child. 

There wasn’t much chance for romance, though Fíli for the most part didn’t miss it. On some days he felt a longing, the desire to simply have someone to care for; a partner in his life, to hold and to love. Those days, Fíli simply took Jocelyn for a longer ride than usual, or go find Bofur to share stories and a pipe.

The last thing that Fíli ever expected was to fall completely, totally, utterly and hopelessly in love.

It wasn’t anything he meant to do. New people constantly filtered through the troupe. Traveling shows were a hard life, and many found they simply weren’t cut out for it. (Oin often said that he didn’t even bother introducing himself until someone had managed to stick around for a month. He was old, and didn’t have the brain space left for the names of people who weren’t going to be around for a while.) Fíli, however, found himself more as part of a welcoming committee. He often wound up as a guide for new members; a mentor as new people transitioned into the lifestyle.

It wasn’t surprising that the new glassblower caught Fíli’s eye. A wooden stall housed the glassblowing, far more sturdy than the tents that were used by most of the other artisans. Fíli had been intrigued. Walking inside the wooden lean-to had been nothing that Fíli had been prepared for. 

Kíli’s hair was long and loose, dark with sweat and stuck to his face. He wore thick dark goggles to protect his eyes from the light of the acetylene torch he used to melt his glass. He wore no gloves, no protection of any kind; just a thin, black tank-top and jeans over work boots. Sun, shadow, and the white-hot light from the torch cast him in a nearly angelic light. 

His hands had been steady and smooth as he’d rolled the end of the glass tube in the heat of the flame, creating a gather. The growing gather was glowing neon orange from the heat of the torch, and kept neatly centered by a slow, smooth spin. Fíli watched, entranced, as Kíli would pick up small rods of different coloured glass and add them to the gather, never faltering with his steady, even rotation. Fínally, Kíli had apparently decided that he done enough, and he brought the cool end of the glass rod up to his mouth. He took a deep breath and then blew it out carefully, spinning the glass (always spinning the glass) and starting to inflate the glowing hot gather. The glass expanded outward, growing thing and transparent. Fíli could see now how the different colours had been added in to form a spiraling path of green and blue.

Fíli had thought that Kíli finished with the piece when the glass had taken on a clean, spherical shape; but then Kíli had grabbed another rod of glass and started pulling. It seemed to be a three-step process. Kíli would add glass to the outside of the main sphere, then pull that glass into the shape of a twisting, curving limb, and then once again blow into the glass tube. Each time, the new limb would inflate, creating a fluid, underwater look. 

At first, Fíli had been so enchanted that he hadn’t even thought about what Kíli was actually making, but soon it became undeniably recognizable. The blue and the green twisted around each other as Kíli crafted a gorgeous octopus into existence. When Kíli had finally finished it, he’d held it carefully with tongs, tapped off his blow tube and was walking the piece over to what Fili guessed was some kind of cooling rack. Fíli stared at it.

‘Don’t touch.’ Kíli said, clearly paying more attention to what he was doing than he was to Fíli.

‘What?’

Kíli got the octopus settled in the annealing chamber and then turned back to Fíli. ‘Don’t touch. A lot of people try to touch the stuff I’ve just made, because the glass doesn’t look hot.’

‘It does when you have it in the flame!’ Fíli pointed out, then fell silent. Kíli still had the goggles on and Fíli found himself deeply wishing that he could make eye contact.

‘Come here.’ Kíli said, returning to his torch without waiting for Fíli to follow.

Fíli went, though, and was quickly handed a pair of goggles similar to the ones that Kíli was wearing. ‘We can’t really see the heat very well, and as a rule, humans are kind of stupid about shit they can’t see.’

Fíli frowned. ‘What?’

‘If a thing doesn’t look hot, then people try to touch it, even if they know on some level that it’ll hurt to touch it, they still do.’ Kíli paused for a moment. ‘It’s like the pizza thing.’

Fíli managed to keep his mouth shut, because he refused to be a broken record who kept repeating the same question. ‘Pizza thing?’ He finally managed.

‘Yeah. You know how when people get a pizza, and it’s fresh from the oven, and everybody knows it’s still way too hot to eat, but they pick up a piece anyway, right? And then, they’re holding this burning hot piece of pizza, and it’s so hot that they’re burning their fingers, and instead of putting the fucking thing down, for some reason the reaction people have is ‘Oh, it’s too hot! It’s so hot it’s burning my fingers! I know what I’ll do! I’ll put that burning hot thing directly into my mouth! And then they do, and it’s really fucking hot still, and they burn the shit out of their tongue.’ Kíli paused and then turned to Fíli. ‘You know?’

Fíli stared for a moment. ‘I had never thought about that before actually, but yeah. You’re totally right.’

Kíli grinned. ‘Right? It’s so weird.’ He shook his head. ‘So, people are dumb.’ Kíli reached out and grabbed a thin rod of glass that was probably no thicker than a strand of spaghetti. ‘Here’s the thing about glass.’ Kíli said, and then he put the glass in front of the flame and started spinning it to make a gather. ‘Glass is a bit like pizza, because people want to pick up a piece far before it’s cooled off. The only problem with this is that if your glass is hot enough to work with, it’s hot enough to melt through flesh.’

Fíli gasped. ‘It does what?’ 

Kíli laughed and grinned. ‘I know, right? But, look here. See the colour of the glass right now?’

Fíli peered at the gather and nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah. It’s the colour of fire.’

‘Okay, so now watch.’ They stood and watched, and it took only a few seconds for the glass to lose the orange glow of heat.

‘It looks safe now, doesn’t it?’ Kíli asked.

Fíli glanced at the white-hot flame of the torch then looked back at the glass. ‘It doesn’t look like anything!’

‘Right!’ Kíli affirmed. ‘It just looks like glass, doesn’t it? Like something you could pick up.’

‘Yeah!’

‘And so there are a lot of people who come in here, and they think that a piece is safe to touch when it really isn’t.’

Fíli nodded slowly, still not quite comprehending how innocent the glass already looked, mere moments from being taken out of the flame. 

‘Look at this.’ Kíli continued, and he brought the glass over to a bucket of water. ‘Watch what happens when I put the glass in, to cool it. Listen.’ Kíli placed the glass in the water. Fíli watched, but he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be waiting for. After about ten seconds in the water, a steaming hiss started.

Fíli blinked up in surprise. ‘What’s that?’

‘When the glass first gets put in the water, it’s so hot that the water evaporates before it can even touch the glass. The hiss starts once the glass is cool enough that the water actually comes into contact.’ He tapped the gather off the rod and then turned to Fíli; taking off his goggles and grinning. ‘How cool is that?’

Fíli took off his goggles as well and grinned back. ‘It’s fucking awesome.’

 

From there it didn’t take much for the two to gravitate together. Months passed, and the faire travelled. Over and over, they packed up and moved on, to unpack, set up and do it all again. Kíli fell into Fíli’s crew naturally. He could often be found sharing a pipe with Bofur, or trying to wheedle extra food from Bombur. Kíli had also branched out into archery and made good friends with Tauriel. Fíli had even once caught him discussing the limitations of portable forges with Thorin (who had been a blacksmith with the faire before he’d taken it over some years ago).

Dís had become something of a mother to them both, and insisted they come over at least once a week so she could feed them vegetables. In return, she knew to call Fíli and Kíli if ever she needed heavy things shifted or a pair of extra hands for anything. When her husband Vali had left on a sabbatical for the year, she’d also started calling when she made too much food. 

Fíli had been sitting at Dís’s table when he’d first realized he was in love with Kíli. 

He’d been slouching back in his chair, sipping on a beer, and smiling at the thought of Kíli coming through the door. Kíli was running late, so he’d inevitably be running. His hair would be a mess, but he’d be nothing but smiles and apologies for Dís, even though she would have nothing of it. They’d sit down and share stories, and Fíli couldn’t wait to tell Kíli about the little girl he’d met earlier who had almost managed to out-talk Bilbo!

It would have been easy enough to pass off the warmth in his chest, or the buzzing in his fingertips. The giddy smile he couldn’t get rid of could have easily been blamed on a good day and good beer.

But it wasn’t.

Kíli had burst through the door, flushed and grinning, spilling excuses for his tardiness, and for the first time that Fíli could remember, he had felt a visceral bolt of want.

It wasn’t just that Kíli was his friend, sarcastic and loyal and enthusiastic. Kíli was attractive - and Fíli had known that. Kíli’s warm eyes and bright smile seemed to draw in everyone. For the first time in his life, Fíli found himself wanting to kiss someone. The very thought of it sent heat spiraling through him.

‘Fí? Fíli? Anybody home?’

‘Huh?’

Kíli laughed, ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’

Fíli smiled back, awash in the ocean of this strange new attraction.

 

It took Fíli several months to figure out what he wanted to do, and several more months to work up the courage to actually do it.

 

But then, finally, the day came.

Fíli was jousting. He’d just brought Jocelyn around to start lining up for another tilt, when he spotted Kíli in the stands. Kíli was standing amongst the fans, face painted with the crossed double sword that Fíli used as his jousting heraldry. Kíli started to shout at the crowd and soon had started the familiar ‘stomp-stomp-clap’ beat of Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’. Fíli was so entranced that he missed the call to start the round, and his assistant Ori had to get Jocelyn going.

It took everything Fíli had to bring his attention back to the joust. Jocelyn was pounding down the dirt track. Dwalin was riding towards him, and Fíli couldn’t think. He got his lance into position purely out of muscle memory, the thoughts in his head were caught in a tornado. The bubbling fizz in the pit of his stomach seemed to have boiled over and melted his brain. When Dwalin hit, Fíli wasn’t even thinking to try and deflect the blow. He took the hit hard to his chest, and got the wind solidly knocked from his lungs.

His ears were ringing. He slumped over Jocelyn’s neck and attempted to catch his breath. His chest hurt. He couldn’t breathe. Kíli was in the stands, cheering him on. Jocelyn had slowed to a trot, and every moment hurt. Fíli had to breathe. Hands were there, helping him down. Fíli must have closed his eyes, he couldn’t see anything. His helmet came off, and someone was touching his face. Fíli blinked his eyes open, and lost his breath again when he was face to face with Kíli.

‘Fí, fuck! Fíli, are you okay?’

Fíli nodded, feeling his head flop around on his neck.

‘Whoa, whoa, Fíli, maybe a little less bobble-head-ing, okay? Oin’s going to be here in a moment. What happened out there? I’ve never seen you miss you cue like that before.’

‘I love you.’

‘I love you too, buddy, but-’

‘No!’ Fíli said, bringing a hand up to place over Kíli’s heart. That was good. He liked it there. ‘I love you.’

Kíli stared, then turned to Ori. ‘What are the rules about concussion confessions?’

Ori shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never gotten one.’

‘Right.’ Kíli said, then turned back to Fíli. ‘Well. I love you too, so you’d best tell me that again as soon as you can walk in a straight line, and we’ll do something about it, alright?’

Fíli grinned. ‘We won’t be walking in a straight line!’

Kíli frowned.

‘‘Cause we won’t be straight!’ Fíli giggled.

Kíli smacked his hand to his forehead. ‘Go.’ He said, fighting back laughter. ‘Get yourself checked out, and we will walk in the least straight way we can think of.’

‘I love you!’ Fíli called, even as Ori pulled him over to see Oin.

‘I’ll love you when you’re better!’ Kíli replied, smiling fondly.

 

Fíli was fine.

 

When Fíli and Kíli went on their first date, they held hands the whole time and zig-zagged their way across every path they took.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got a whole bunch more stuff[ on tumbr](http://taupefox59.tumblr.com/) too!


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